Wind Profile Diagnosis from Surface Routine Meteorological Data Over a Coastal Area

A simple algorithm is proposed in order to transform routine surface wind speed observations near the coast to a wind at the height of the equilibrium planetary boundary layer as well as to any other height over a relatively flat coastal region. The model is based on the well known internal boundary layer (IBL) concept, Monin-Obukhov similarity theory and the resistance law, and describes the effects of the roughness transition from sea to land as well as the effect of stability on the shape of the profiles and the IBL growth. The required input weather data are no more than surface wind speed, air temperature and total cloud cover. Satisfactory agreement was found between measurements at Hellinikon airport and estimations made with the scheme. The introduction of a transition layer above the IBL did not improve the agreement to any significant extent. Mean values of the estimated wind differed by less than 1 m s ^-1 from the observed ones, a difference within the accuracy of the reported rawinsonde values. The rms error varied in the range of 17–22% of the observed average value, giving the best agreement under unstable conditions. The correlation coefficient between the observed and the estimated values of the wind, at the height of the equilibrium planetary boundary layer, ranged between 0.74 and 0.90.     

Carbonate systems along nutrient and temperature gradients: some sedimentological and geochemical constraints

Research over the past several decades has clearly demonstrated that changes in the ocean environment have had major impacts on carbonate systems. Changes in climate, ocean circulation and seafloor spreading rates have influenced temperature and seawater chemistry, including carbonate saturation state and nutrient availability, and thereby have determined boundary conditions for the biota that form carbonate platforms. In turn, the biota determine accumulation rates and facies zonations, thus controlling platform geometry and facies dynamics. In the first section of this paper, we examine how nutrient availability influences carbonate facies associations. We first discuss the role of temperature and nutrient gradients in the modern ocean and their influence on biotic associations. Then we discuss how carbonate sedimentation can be characterized along nutrient gradients. In the second section, we review proxies currently used to reconstruct paleoproductivity in open ocean environments and discuss their applicability to neritic carbonate systems. We highlight the variety of existing proxies and their limitations, and suggest that multiple lines of evidence are needed for valid interpretations. Our short review discusses sedimentological, biogenic, and geochemical proxies that can be used to reconstruct past nutrient fluxes and to constrain paleoceanographic controls over the distribution of carbonate associations. However, it also reveals that more data and case studies are needed that integrate shallow and deep water carbonate sequences and elucidate the links between temperature vs. nutrient supplies changes and facies in ancient carbonate sequences.

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Analysis of two-decade meteorological and air quality trends in Rome (Italy)

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - The extreme temperature events are a concern in recent years due to climate variability particularly in India as there is an increase in the temperature...     

Are Seafarers Migrants? ‐ Situating Seafarers in the Framework of Mobility and Transnationalism

Seafarers are a unique occupational group who are recruited, by international agencies and work under contract on board ships of different kinds: merchant cargo and container ships; deep sea fishing vessels; and cruise ships. Seafarers “travel” either globally or regionally over varying distances. This paper seeks to find a place for the movement of seafarers in the existing theoretical context of labour migration. They undertake a particular type of circulatory or ‘transversal’ labour migration, and have established a special form of social identity. Locating them within theoretical migration and transnational concepts will contribute a new perspective.     

Criteria for recognizing shelf-slope clinoforms in outcrop; Jurassic Lajas and Los Molles formations,S. Neuquén Basin,Argentina

Seismic-reflection data show that most deepwater (>200 m water depth) basins are filled by sand and mud dispersed across clinoformal geometries characterized by gently dipping topsets, steeper foresets and gently dipping bottomsets. However, the entire geometry of these ubiquitous clinoforms is not always recognized in outcrops. Sometimes the infill is erroneously interpreted as “layer cake” or “ramp” stratigraphy because the topset-foreset-bottomset clinoforms are not well exposed. Regional 2-D seismic lines show clinoforms in the Lower to Middle Jurassic Challaco, Lajas, and Los Molles formations in S. Neuquén Basin in Argentina. Time equivalent shelf, slope and basin-floor segments of clinoforms are exposed, and can be walked out in hundreds of metres thick and kilometres-wide outcrops. The studied margin-scale clinoforms are not representing a continental-margin but a deepwater shelf margin that built out in a back-arc basin. Lajas-Los Molles clinoforms have been outcrop-mapped by tracing mudstones interpreted as flooding surfaces on the shelf and abandonment surfaces (low sedimentation rate) in the deepwater basin. The downslope and lateral facies variability in the outcrops is also consistent with a clinoform interpretation. The Lajas topset (shelf) is dominated by fluvial and tidal deposits. The shelf-edge rollover zone is occasionally occupied by a 40–50-m-thick coarse-grained shelf-edge delta, sometimes incising into the underlying slope mudstones, producing oblique clinoforms expressing toplap erosion on seismic. A muddy transgressive phase capping the shelf-edge deltas contains tidal sandbodies. Shelf-edge deltas transition downslope into turbidite- and debris flow-filled channels that penetrate down the mud-prone Los Molles slope. At the base-of-slope, some 300m below the shelf edge, there are basin-floor fan deposits (>200 m thick) composed of sandy submarine-fan lobes separated by muddy abandonment intervals. The large-scale outcrop correlation between topset–foreset–bottomset allows facies and depositional interpretation and sets outcrop criteria recognition for each clinoform segment.     

Polychaete Communities of Greece: An Ecological Overview

Abstract. Benthic samples were collected from 188 stations distributed over the Aegean and Ionian Seas (Greece, Eastern Mediterranean). Sampled substrata represented a variety of biotopes in soft bottoms with depths ranging from 3 to 380 m. The samples yielded a total of 398 species of polychaetes. Detrended Correspondence Analysis was applied to the whole set of data as well as to three bathymetric groups into which the data was divided. The results showed that in each bathymetric group, different factors determine the spatial distribution of species. Over the whole data set the type of substrata proved to be the major factor, whereas depth is the second most important. Other controlling factors were the substratum type and exposure to hydrodynamism in the shallow group, depth and substratum in the intermediate, and sediment granulometry and depth in the deep one. Diversity, species number and density tended to decrease with depth, while diversity and species number are favoured by coarse material in the sediment.     

A strong-motion database from the Central American subduction zone

Subduction earthquakes along the Pacific Coast of Central America generate considerable seismic risk in the region. The quantification of the hazard due to these events requires the development of appropriate ground-motion prediction equations, for which purpose a database of recordings from subduction events in the region is indispensable. This paper describes the compilation of a comprehensive database of strong ground-motion recordings obtained during subduction-zone events in Central America, focusing on the region from 8 to 14° N and 83 to 92° W, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. More than 400 accelerograms recorded by the networks operating across Central America during the last decades have been added to data collected by NORSAR in two regional projects for the reduction of natural disasters. The final database consists of 554 triaxial ground-motion recordings from events of moment magnitudes between 5.0 and 7.7, including 22 interface and 58 intraslab-type events for the time period 1976–2006. Although the database presented in this study is not sufficiently complete in terms of magnitude–distance distribution to serve as a basis for the derivation of predictive equations for interface and intraslab events in Central America, it considerably expands the Central American subduction data compiled in previous studies and used in early ground-motion modelling studies for subduction events in this region. Additionally, the compiled database will allow the assessment of the existing predictive models for subduction-type events in terms of their applicability for the Central American region, which is essential for an adequate estimation of the hazard due to subduction earthquakes in this region.     

Mineralogy and trace-element geochemistry of the high-grade iron ores of the Águas Claras Mine and comparison with the Capão Xavier and Tamanduá iron ore deposits, Quadrilátero Ferrífero, Brazil

Several major iron deposits occur in the Quadrilátero Ferrífero (QF), southeastern region of Brazil, where metamorphosed and heterogeneously deformed banded iron formation (BIF) of the Cauê Formation, regionally called itabirite, was transformed into high- (Fe >64%) and low-grade (30%?2O₃, with a higher amount of detrimental impurities, especially MnO, in the soft ore. Both hard and soft ores are depleted in trace elements. The high-grade ores at the Águas Claras Mine have at least a dual origin, involving hypogene and supergene processes. The occurrence of the hard, massive high-grade ore within “fresh” dolomitic itabirite is evidence of its hypogene origin. Despite the contention about the origin of the dolomitic itabirite (if this rock is a carbonate-rich facies of the Cauê Formation or a hematite–carbonate precursor of the soft high-grade ore), mineralogical and geochemical features of the soft high-grade ore indicate that it was formed by leaching of dolomite from the dolomitic itabirite by meteoric water. The comparison of the Águas Claras, Capão Xavier and Tamanduá orebodies shows that the original composition of the itabiritic protore plays a major role in the genesis of high- and low-grade soft ores in the QF. Under the same weathering and structural conditions, the dolomitic itabirite is the more favorable to form high-grade deposits than siliceous itabirite. Field relations at the Águas Claras and Capão Xavier deposits suggest that it is not possible to form huge soft high-grade supergene deposits from siliceous itabirite, unless another control, such as impermeable barriers, had played an important role. The occurrence in the Tamanduá Mine of a large, soft, high-grade orebody formed from siliceous itabirite and closely associated with hypogene hard ore suggests that large, soft, high-grade orebodies of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero, which occur within siliceous itabirite, have a hypogene contribution in their formation.